What Not To Do If You Get A BAD Cold...

I'm now wrapping up the end of the third week in my battle with that horrible cold that is going around.

Judah, our 2 1/2 year old, is long since over his bout with it, and is back to his full-throttle, high-energy way of life.

Not me. I thought I was getting better, but I'd spoken too soon.

I continue to have to breathe through my mouth at night, and waken to either coughing fits every hour-on-the-hour or the incessant need to blow my nose.

My lips are chapped.

I'm leaking out of almost every orifice on my head, and am a whiny mess.

And I'm getting desperate for one, uninterrupted night's worth of sleep.

I suppose that it didn't help that when I was at my worst with this illness, my husband was off at a teacher's conference leaving me to cope all by my lonesome while sick. Then he came home feeling not so good himself and got to retire early, on account of his having to work the next day. Because, you know, what I spend my days doing is apparently recreation. Leisurely activities like scrubbing toilets, mopping floors, and occasionally having to burst into speed to rescue an errant toddler from the dangers of neighborhood cars speeding past our cul-de-sac.

But you know how it is. Us mom's don't have time to get sick.

So to cope, I self-medicated.

Because nothing comforts quite like chocolate.

And needing a good chocolate fix, the only thing I could find in the entire house were Hunt's chocolate pudding cups.

It was either that, or drive far, far away for a slice of my favorite cheesecake ever.

Call me crazy, but I just wasn't up to trying to wrangle my toddler son into his car seat while he was performing that amazing gymnastic feat of strength otherwise known as the iron cross (we should really consider entering him in the Junior Olympics. He's that good.)

Fortunately for me, the pudding cups weighed in at only 120 calories and 3.5 grams of fat per serving, compared to a bazillion calories and a pound and a half of fat in the slice of cheesecake.

It was the logical, yea, even sensible choice.

Plus, I'm a self-sacrificing kind of mom.

I threw myself in front of the pudding cups to protect my children from the harmful effects of foodstuffs sitting for who-knows-how-long in plastic containers sealed with aluminum tops, enhanced with artificial flavors and colors yellow#5 and yellow #6, all disguised in what appeared to the naked eye to be plain old chocolaty goodness.

Ahh, the sacrifices we parents must sometimes make on in the best interest of our children's good health.

Because believe it or not, we never buy these sorts of things in our whole-grain, health-foody home. And I'm serious when I say this. One of the boys' aunts (who shall remain nameless) apparently took pity on our poor, sweets-deprived children, and sent an entire case home with them after visiting her house recently. A case which I immediately banished to the garage (intending to break it out for use at our next youth group event), so it would be out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Because, you know, it was just too much of a temptation for me our children, so I did everything in my power to save this family from going down that broad road that leads to destruction. Ahem.

However, I have learned something from this binge lapse in my usual good judgement, and I don't recommend medicating with pudding for bad colds for a couple of reasons:

First, pudding was the better choice over the cheesecake calorie-wise, but that only pertains if you limit yourself to one serving. Not that I've had more than five one or two, mind you.

Second, as most mom's know, there is a very complex mathematical formula that comes into play when a family member is sick with a cold:

Dairy products + a bad cold = congestion and lots of snot an abundance of mucous.

Not to mention garbage cans overflowing with used tissues.

And having to resort to using rolls of toilet paper when all the boxes of tissues in the house are used up because you didn't feel up to navigating the crowds at Walmart with an eight-armed toddler grabbing at everything in sight feeling as you do.

Nor do you feel like going anywhere that would necessitate another hand washing for already crackly-dry hands due to excessive hand washing so that germs are not spread to the unaffected members of the household (even if unrolling a length of toilet paper with which to blow your nose just doesn't look very classy while waiting in the parent pick-up line at your son's school).

However, the third reason reason is due to the little known side effect of chocolate pudding cups on sleep-deprived moms with colds...and that is that they are hallucinogenic.

Yes, my friends, there is apparently something in those pudding cups that causes hallucinations.

Allow me to explain.

Routine tasks like applying makeup (so as to disguise the dark circles under one's eyes) will begin to really trip you out after consumption of chocolate pudding cups. Especially when you see what appears to be bite marks in your concealer.

But then, that's just crazy, because who in the world would ever do such a thing?

Then, in that brain fog that usually accompanies a head cold, you will begin to see strange things occurring around the house, like your 11 year old son playing with little-kid toys like Buzz and Woody.

And your toddler dressing strangely.

.

And then your older son will get right in your face, clowning around trying to make you laugh and feel better when you're dozing on the couch. Later, you will have no recollection of exactly what he said or did, only the vague notion that whatever it was, it was pretty cheesy.

.

Even simple tasks like putting on your shoes, which was an automatic maneuver before...under the effects of chocolate pudding cups leave you feeling...impaired. Disoriented to the point of not even being able to slip your feet into your favorite pair of shoes on the first couple of tries. It's really trippy.

And just when you think you're past the worst of it, you'll see strange, impish creatures running through the house.

Take my word for it...it's really better to just steer clear of the dairy products and sweets altogether, because trust me, you don't want your cold to last for three weeks, and you don't want to feel like this. *couuuuuugh, cough, sneeze*